So I decided this weekend, more or less on a whim, to stop smoking, at least for the near future. I haven’t had one since Saturday, which doesn’t sound like all that long, but bear in mind that I normally would’ve had 40 or 50 since then by now. Anyway, my reaction so far is that addiction is overrated. Now, I’ve smoked since I was about 17, and I certainly feel like I’m probably a little edgier and more irritable, and find myself (oddly enough) thinking I’d like a cigarette. But you know that much-derided old line, “I can quit anytime I like?” Well, seems like it’s true. I don’t feel like there’s any danger that I’ll somehow “lose control,” that my legs will, zombie like, carry me off to a deli where I won’t be able to stop my arms from handing over a few bucks for another pack, and then lighting up. I just find myself periodically observing my own (fairly mild) withdrawal symptoms and thinking: “huh, that sucks a bit. Guess it’ll wear off in a while.” I know it hasn’t been that long, but since it doesn’t feel at all like a “struggle,” I can’t imagine it’ll get any more difficult as time goes on. So I’ve got to wonder… how often when people say they “try” to quit but “can’t” do they just mean that they don’t want to quit particularly badly?

Update: Mark Moller observes that the people who really have trouble are those who’ve been smoking for 20 years, and that probably different people get more or less “hooked” just as a function of brain chemistry. All probably true, but we never hear any of that in the anti-smoking propaganda. I guess because it’s harder to demonize the stuff (and its peddlers) when the downside, for most people, to stopping after seven years is a moderately unpleasant week or two.

Update 2: Argh, I guess this came out wrong. I’m not bagging on people who genuinely find it hard to quit, I’m sure plenty of people do. But I think maybe by talking up how very very addictive cigarettes are, partly to discourage people from starting, we’ve also made it more difficult for people to quit. I think you probably approach quitting very differently if you’re thinking in terms of “fighting” an “addiction” which “compels” you to smoke instead of saying, e.g., “when you quit, you’re going to have to put up with X weeks of symptoms A, B, and C.”